


Pale Blue Eyes

by TheLadyofShalott



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, Dystopian World, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-27
Updated: 2012-08-27
Packaged: 2017-11-12 23:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/496912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLadyofShalott/pseuds/TheLadyofShalott
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When John Watson chose the medical career path, he wasn't expecting the sands of Afghanistan, he wasn't expecting the PTSD, and he definitely wasn't expecting the colors his eyes would turn. Black for death. But most of all, he wasn't expecting to find the stranger with the pale blue eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pale Blue Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This wasn't Brit-picked, because I know I would do a shit job of it. Because I am the laziest person I know, I managed to change most of the colors to colours. I hope it isn't to jarring for anyone. I'm open to suggestions. I definitely do not own Sherlock or John, or for that matter "Pale Blue Eyes" by The Velvet Underground. It is a great song. Look it up. Complete Johnlock. Lyrics from lyricsdepot.com.

Sometimes I feel so happy,  
Sometimes I feel so sad.  
Sometimes I feel so happy,  
But mostly you just make me mad.  
Baby, you just make me mad.  
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.  
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.  
  
Thought of you as my mountain top,  
Thought of you as my peak.  
Thought of you as everything,   
I've had but couldn't keep.  
I've had but couldn't keep.  
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.  
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.  
  
If I could make the world as pure and strange as what I see,  
I'd put you in the mirror,  
I put in front of me.  
I put in front of me.  
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.  
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.  
  
Skip a life completely.  
Stuff it in a cup.  
She said, “Money is like us in time,  
It lies, but can't stand up.  
Down for you is up.”  
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.  
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.  
  
It was good what we did yesterday.  
And I'd do it once again.  
The fact that you are married,   
only proves that you're my best friend.  
But it's truly, truly a sin.  
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.  
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.  
-The Velvet Underground

-

 

            John cringed into the reflective glass, watching his irises turn the exact colour of a Jack ‘O Lantern on Halloween night. It made him think of Harry when she was young, running around like a little mongrel, begging candy off of every neighbor within walking distance of the little flat in Ealing Common. He used to laugh at her, he remembered, his happiness reflected in her edgy smiles.

She would dress up as Dracula or make herself a paper-maché Godzilla outfit and walk up to a house, holding his little hand, pulling on his toy stethoscope and whispering in his ear “Hey, Johnny, watch this.” She would then proceed to hide behind the bushes, or under the porch, or (on one more memorable occasion) behind the family’s dog. He would giggle as he rang the doorbell, his giddiness turning his eyes the colour of a ray of light. And always, when the nice stranger would unsuspectingly open the door, hand already reaching out to give him candy, Harry would suddenly burst out of nowhere like a little flying paper-maché monster, screaming “TRICK OR TREAT. KNEEL MORTAL AND BESTOW ONTO ME YOUR EARTHLY SWEETS.”

It would make him scream with laughter. More than once, the two walked home under the full October moon, needing each other for support as tears ran down their faces. They used to clutch each other as if the other might simply vanish one day. Harry used to smile at him like her younger brother hung the moon. Not anymore. Never like that, with warm umber dancing in her eyes. Now her eyes were cold and dead, always stuck in their natural green, the alcohol poisoning her.

-

Someone came into the loo, maybe Joe, maybe Mike. Their quiet footsteps came up behind John, but he barely even registered their presence, as lost as he was in his world of childish smiles and games long gone.

“You alright there, Watson?” the man asked. He looked worried. That’s all John noticed about him. Those worried lavender eyes, straining through their extra-strength bottle glasses.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just having a spot of trouble with the blood is all.”

John shook himself out of his reverie, looking down at his dirtied surgeon’s hands. Seeing one last look from the intruder in the mirror, John ducked his head and quickly started muttering something about holes in latex gloves and how “these things just aren’t manufactured the way they used to be”…etc. The other man quietly buggered off as John turned on the tap.

The blood, his patient’s, ran down the drain in rivulets, mixing with the boiling water and turning it slightly pink. Blood. His patient’s. Christ, he didn’t even know her name. She was pretty. Or at least as pretty as anyone can be, strapped to an operating table in nothing but her sky blue, cloud printed hospital gown. He remembered thinking that she was just the kind of girl he would ask on one of his infamous dates if he had met her on the street. There, in that universe, they would not be Doctor John H. Watson, retired war veteran and surgeon, and Unnamed Dead Girl. Instead, they would be John and Christine, or John and Helen. Yes, that’s right. She looked very much like a Helen.

He would have made her laugh, seen a happy gold streak in her eyes, or maybe a content cerulean. Instead what he saw was the scarlet of her blood and the neon green of her heart monitor flat lining. Jesus, it was just supposed to be a routine procedure, an intestinal biopsy. Her chart had said that she had been complaining of some serious digestive problems. Small amounts of blood in her stool, that sort of thing. One of John’s assistants had commented that it might be her liver, but she didn’t look like a drinker, not like Harry did. She looked like just a normal human being, unimportant, essential, loved. As John had his hands inside her, her intestines decided to take that moment to burst. Blood everywhere. It sent her into cardiac arrest before John could even move a muscle. The blood transfusion was two minutes too late.

John still had his hands under the tap, even though all the blood was gone. His skin was slowly turning an angry pink, but he couldn’t stop staring at it, he wouldn’t move. Inside his brain, another tick went on his board of casualties. All of them caused by him. Sometimes the board was just a small distraction, a tiny niggling behind all of his thoughts. _52\. You’ve killed 52 people. People with quirks and obsessions and pets and lovers and Harrys._ Sometimes, though, sometimes, like today, it was a shout, a deafening roar threatening to pull him underneath his life, tugging him to the darkest of places. Bringing his eyes into that in-between shade of the deepest purple and black. Or maybe just black.

He had only seen his eyes turn that colour twice. Once, when he discovered he would never go back to the battlefield, and once when he found out about Harry’s self-destruction. He had never seen that colour in anyone else. Ever.

On auto-pilot now, John straightened up and turned the faucet off. He needed to stop thinking about that. He didn’t want any of that to happen again. Black. It’s the absence of colour. Eyes aren’t meant to have _no_ colour. They always have to have some, whether it be the colour a baby is born with, the one that its eyes always seem to revert to (usually the basic green, blue, brown, or more rarely a mix of two of those), or a temporary one. The colours that crest on the waves of emotions. The colours that sweep into pupils, dyeing them with deep pine greens or sparkling reds. Having eyes with _no_ colour would be enough to gain him a witch hunt. The Wardens weren’t very keen on Odd Eyes, were they?

-

John stepped out of his office just as the nurses were turning down the lights. Somewhere, far off in the maternity ward, he could hear a woman screaming. He flinched as her voice hit a pitch that only dogs could hear. _Natural birth, probably_ , he thought. She screamed again, her voice finally giving out. _Definitely natural birth._ John still wondered at the people who kept their faith and refused anything the doctors gave them. Some people, he knew, were scared to the Colours. Some people thought they were unnatural, that eyes are only meant to be one colour. _What a load of codswallop._

John turned his coat collar up against the rain as he stepped through the front doors of Bart’s, hiding his eyes. He walked fast, not knowing what colour his eyes held at the moment. He willed himself to fade into the stark gray landscape of central London, wishing it would rain harder so he would be forced to run home. As it was, it would look suspicious if he moved faster than a brisk walk. His feet took him to the other side of the street to avoid a Warden on normal patrol as the ever-watching glass eyes followed him. It was almost curfew. He had stayed too long at Barts, watching the blood roll down the drain and brooding about Harry and his little eye problem.

That wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all. _Stupid. STUPID_. _I forgot my bloody identification card in the office._ Well, it was too late now. There was no way back for him, he could only go forward. He quickened his pace, hurrying to Aldersgate Court and the relative safety of the highway. He was almost there now, almost home, where he could dry off and sit in his gray little room on his gray little bedsit, watching the phone for news from Harry. She still hadn’t made up with Clara after that nasty fight. Something about an AA meeting. Harry needed Clara, John could see that. Clara grounded Harry, brought her back by the string when she was a balloon about to float away.

Another Warden caught John’s eye, but he managed to duck into the glorified alley of Newbury Street. He pulled out his keys and put them into the lock on the front door to Number Eight, his hands fumbling in the cold. It seemed to be raining harder, his previous wish coming back to haunt him. The keys weren’t cooperating, slipping through his fingers and falling multiple times. The Warden was still watching him, a block away, his hands on his cane, resting, waiting for the action he was promised when he signed up for the Warden career path. His leather jacket turned up against the wind. John shivered harder. And fumbled more.

John dropped the keys again and cursed. He couldn’t find them, it was raining too hard. Drops of moisture were sliding down his back, soaking him in that way that only rain can, giving him a bone-crunching shiver. He felt as if he was breaking apart on his hands and knees searching for the damn keys, his eyes catching no tell-tale glimmer of silver in the London flood. He was vibrating hard enough to self-destruct. Hard enough to shatter into hundreds of tiny pieces, thousands of tiny parts of John. Pieces that would only get swept away in the rain.

 _There!_ He made a mad grab for the keychain and quickly straightened up, convinced the Warden would be right behind him, breathing down his neck, demanding cards, papers, an eye-scan, or at least an explanation as to why he was out after curfew. But when he looked around him, there was no one. The Warden had moved on, was no longer watching from afar, his hand on his shock-cane. In fact, there was no one on the street. John could hear no late-night delivery trucks, no chatter behind closed doors. He could see no blue glow of televisions through curtains. It was all quiet but for the sound of the rain. London was holding her breath.

John gazed around himself for a bit, uneasy at the sudden silence of Newbury Street. It wasn’t like London to be so quiet. There weren’t even any of the usually constant car horns out in the distance. Cautiously, John slid the smooth key into the lock and turned it just so, his muscle memory telling him to turn harder when it momentarily stuck.

The door creaked open as John pushed it inwards. He stepped into the complete darkness of the living room, leaving London’s flood behind him, and closed the door. Instinctually, he paused.

There was something wrong. Someone was in the flat with him.

John could hear a very slight sound of breath, breath that caught and pulled in the breather’s chest. Painful breath. Injured breath. There was a rustle.

Torn between taking out his gun from where it rested at the small of his back and running back out the door to take his chances with the Warden, John froze. Slowly, hesitantly, two pale blue eyes, seemingly suspended in air, rose from behind where the couch must be. Rationally, John knew they must be attached to _someone_ , but the inky blackness surrounding the eyes’ coolness prevented him from seeing the intruder’s outline.

John took a step forward.

“Don’t come any closer,” the eyes whispered. The voice that belonged to the man, yes it was absolutely a man, gave the impression of a posh upbringing, his Southern accent very well-to-do. But that voice, ohgodthatvoice, was damaged, rough, injured, John noticed. Whomever used that voice was not in a particularly good state.

“I won’t,” John whispered, wishing not to startle the man. “Just tell me what you are doing in my flat and how you’re injured. Tell me how I can help you.”

The eyes seemed to tip to one side for a second, as if the man was cocking his head.

“How did you know about my injuries?”

“Your voice and your breath sound pained. You might have a punctured lung or some kind of respiratory problem. Besides, your eyes are ice-blue. Almost white. That is the usual colour of pain, in my experience.”

A quiet huff of laughter flowed from the man. “I am injured, yes.”

Confusion clouded John’s mind. _What on earth is so funny right now?_ John had that peculiar thought that the man was not participating in the same conversation that John was. He seemed to be a couple steps ahead.

“How. How are you injured.”

The eyes suddenly ascended, the man obviously trying to get up. “You are right, Doctor Watson, there is something the matter with my right lung. It does not seem to be operating efficiently.”

Shaking off the fear at the fact that this complete stranger knew his name, John took a step forward.

“NO. Don’t come any closer.” The man pleaded, desperately. The thought went through John’s brain that this man had something to hide. John paused mid-step, his foot hovering in the air.

“You see, Doctor Watson. You cannot touch me. I am a dead man. The colours are going to kill me. And I am going to disappear in the rain. Nothing will be left,” The man whispered. John had only seen this type of delusion once before, among the sands of Afghanistan, in a soldier, Billy was his name. He was American, blue-eyed naturally, blonde hair. But when he laughed, his eyes would turn the deepest teal. When he died, his eyes were as white as the strangers’ were now. Gunshot to the throat. With his dying breath, Billy told John to “stop the vicious greens.”

John shivered and was instantly transported into the present moment. The shadow of the man was still crouched behind the couch, whimpering.

Suddenly, the shadow got to its feet.

“You see, doctor, the colours are going to get me.” The man’s voice was surprisingly strong.

The shadow crumpled. It was all John could do to catch him before he hit the ground.


End file.
